Thank you oh great and exalted judge of all things silly. I get 900+km from a tank and always fill up with 2 bars on the fuel gauge. 900km is about 550 miles.
Impressive. 2 bars is about 7 - 7.5 gallons on a U.S. Prius so that would be in the ballpark of 75 mpg.
I can almost never squeeze 9 gallons in my prius. Usually 8 is a lot. And I always run it down to one pip, more often than not one blinking pip.
I typically put in about 8.5 gallons at the flashing pip. I've only broken 9 twice, and one of those, the highest at 9.3 gallons, was after 4 or so click/restarts.
I always fill when I get to the last pip. I don't wait for the flashing to occur because I hate having to worry about not having a gas station nearby. I usually get around 400+ miles on the car, which is great. I use to refill every 200 on my truck, haha. And buying a Prius doesn't guarantee you 48 MPG. It really depends on the driver's style. If you have that foot on the gas all the time, you won't be hitting the estimated MPG...
I have a 2009 Prius and when it was new I could not get more than 8 gallons in it because of the bladder inside the tank. Also I live in California and the fill up shuts off quicker than stations in other states. I made a trip back east and my tank bladder stretched out so now I can put in about 11 gallons when I get down to one pip. Also my mileage increased 2 mpg when I changed to Mobil one oil. Does anyone have any figures on whether an oil additive might increase the mileage even more?